Kuroko no Basuke (黒子のバスケ, Kuroko no Basuke, lit. Kuroko's Basketball or The Basketball Which Kuroko Plays) is a Japanese manga about basketball written and illustrated by Tadatoshi Fujimaki (藤巻 忠俊, Fujimaki Tadatoshi). Started in December 2008, Kuroko no Basuke tells the story of a high school basketball team trying to make it to the Interhigh.

The series is serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump and an anime adaption produced by Production I.G. began in April 2012 and ended in September. The second season aired in October 2013 an ended in March 2014. The third season began in January 2015.

The series, replace novels, character bible and anibas are also published in chinese by Tong Li comics titled 影子籃球員 (yǐng zi de lán qiú)

Contents

The basketball team of Teikō Middle School rose to distinction by demolishing all competition. The regulars of the team became known as the "Generation of Miracles". After graduating from middle school, these five stars went to different high schools with top basketball teams. However, a fact few know is that there was another player in the "Generation of Miracles": a phantom sixth man. This mysterious player is now a freshman at Seirin High, a new school with a powerful, if little-known, team. Now, Kuroko Tetsuya, the sixth member of the "Generation of Miracles", and Kagami Taiga, a naturally talented player who spent most of middle school in the US, are aiming to bring Seirin to the top of Japan, taking on Kuroko's former teammates one by one.

The Kuroko no Basuke manga series started in December 2008 in Weekly Shōnen Jump, written and illustrated by Tadatoshi Fujimaki. The serial chapters are collected into 30 volumes (tankōbon) with the first one published on April 3, 2009. The series ended September 1, 2014.

An anime adaption of Kuroko no Basuke (produced by Production I.G) premiered April 7, 2012 and with the season ending on September 22, 2012 with 25 episodes. The official anime site has been open since November 28. A special has also aired on April 3, as a prequel.

Season 2 premiered October 5, 2013 and ended on March 29, 2014 with 25 episodes as well. A third season has been announced and began airing on January 10, 2015.

The Kuroko no Basuke -Replace- series are short stories in Teikō High School and everyday lives of the other schools and characters in the series, written in light novel format by Sawako Hirabayashi and illustrated by Tadatoshi Fujimaki. There have been five novels released so far, telling tales from the school festival, a training camp and other situations.

Vomic is a corner at the variety TV program Sakiyomi Jan Bang!, where voice actors lend their voices to characters from popular manga. The manga featured is rotated monthly. Kuroko no Basuke was featured on the show in January 2011, had eight episodes and covered chapter 26, 27 & 28.

Many of the Kuroko no Basuke manga volumes have ranked high in the Japanese Comic charts, often taking the #1-spot and staying in the ranking for several weeks. Kuroko no Basuke is currently still serialized and spawned a fairly popular 25-episode anime series. A second season began airing October 2013. Productions like the game and light novels also indicate popularity among the fans. Notable is the amount of fujoshi (female fans of yaoi and BL) fans, causing a massive flow of Kuroko no Basuke fanart, fan-fiction and shippings. This side of the series is now a notable part of the fandom. Although it hasn't been licensed by an American company, the series is being published in French, Vietnamese, and Indonesian. Further more, the volume sales have increased drastically after the airing of the first anime season, from 300,000 average copies per volume to 500,000.